Derailing announcement threads

Repeatedly commenting on new licenses with some variation of "this is X and I want Y" will no longer be tolerated, and those posts will simply be deleted.

This is not a blanket ban against all kinds of criticism. This is specifically targeting the practice of going to most new announcement threads and leaving a short message about how you're disappointed in the choice of license. We are fully aware that our users have a diverse range of preferences, and that not every new title will be appealing to everyone. And naturally, the more narrow your taste, the fewer titles will appeal to you. However, posting the same short message over and over again is a poor form of feedback, and mostly only serves to derail the conversation. This might not be your intent, but it's unfortunately often the end result, which is why I feel the need to put an end to it.

This commonly takes the form of "this is vanilla, and I want non-vanilla." Vanilla is a term with no set definition, and it will vary from one person to another. Recently, we publicly shared our definition of the term as "Happy sex with a romantic, sweet story. Typically involves a couple, or they end up together in the end." Historically, roughly 40% of the content of the site falls into this category, which I believe is a very reasonable amount.

However, those who strongly oppose vanilla tend to have a much broader definition, and use it as an umbrella term for anything not extreme. I don't find this catch-all version of the term particularly useful, but I can see why some do as a shorthand for saying "I want more extreme material." I understand the desire to have your preferences catered to, as there are many genres I'd like to see more of personally. But the problem is that this is a niche that's not catered to on an industry-wide level. To exemplify this, let's take a look at this recent tweet:

It's a simple breakdown of consensual (right column) vs. non-consensual (left) material in a number of popular ero manga magazines. The average comes out to 19% NC, but that number is skewed by a few magazines with a huge amount of this content, far outside what seems to be the norm. The median value of the same data is 12% NC. If you only look at the magazines we publish that are on that list, we get 13% average, and 11% median NC content.

You can't draw any definitive conclusions from a survey of such a limited scope, but it helps to illustrate my point: extreme content is not well-served in commercial magazines. There are a few niche magazines that specialize in a certain genre, but overall, the industry as a whole favor non-offensive material with a broad appeal—a revelation that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The same way you see remakes, super hero franchises, and other "safe" movies coming out of Hollywood, the ero manga industry also sticks to a formula with a proven rate of success.

Finally, I have to acknowledge that this looks at NC content, which isn't necessarily the same as "non-vanilla" (as in, the broader definition of the term). I also don't know what criteria the author used to define NC in their research, so this data should only be treated as a rough estimate.


So what's the takeaway from all this? Well, we have to be selective in our pick of licenses, as we can only put out 22-24 books per year with our current two week release schedule. The books ultimately come from the magazines, so if we're picking from a pool of ~12% "non-vanilla" content, you can't expect more than 2-3 books of this nature each year. We also have to be extra picky with these titles, as we automatically limit our potential audience by choosing a niche genre. We can take more risk with mainstream content, but we don't choose our alternative titles willy-nilly. As a result, we only pick up one of those titles if we believe it will be a hit, and sometimes, that title just isn't there when browsing for potential new licenses.

That said, while nothing is final at this point, we're currently on track for hitting that quota of 2-3 "non-vanilla" titles for the year. If you're of the opinion that there's too much vanilla in the book lineup, hopefully these titles will be to your liking once they're announced later this year.

I basically never post in the forum, but I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents:

I'm 100% satisfied with Fakku's direction. I own many of their books, and am VERY happy to have fully uncensored books at all! Fakku isn't really that old. Their content grows everyday, and they will inevitably have something that covers everyone's tastes. And hopefully, as Fakku becomes more successful, artists in Japan will take notice and begin producing content with international audiences in mind. i.e. more "extreme" content that wouldn't sell in Japan, but WOULD sell everywhere else.

I just hope that, as time progesses, Fakku doesn't start getting greedy. I greatly appreciate having downloadable PDFs so I can store a backup. I'd hate for Fakku to do things like add DRM and other anti-consumer measures.

Anyway, if any of you admins are reading, you have at least one satisfied customer!

Thank you 🙏 It means a lot to me, and all of the staff, to see users speak up in support of what we are doing.



What does this mean? Not only are our books popular on our own store, but we also sell them in actual retail bookstores, on Amazon, and through many other digital outlets. Of the top 24 best selling items on our store (of all time), 22 of them are books. Additionally, knowing the industry, I can tell you that our hentai books outsell even many traditional manga you find at Barnes & Noble and other big box retailers.

To quote a post from you about FAKKU going legit, posted back in 2016 almost 4 years ago:



I think the problem might be you, not what we are doing.

I am more than satisfied with how we've been balancing the different genres and tags we include in our releases. Instead of buying a book, sign up for a subscription. There's some dark stuff on FAKKU from the magazines, things even I've been uncomfortable reading (and I've seen it all). When we asked the community to pick our next book from Kill Time Communication, they overwhelming voted for a vanilla book, almost 2/1 over the second place entry in a poll designed to have 2 controversial titles and 2 non-controversial titles. Even after that, I personally chose one of the losing controversial titles, PANDRA, to placate users who didn't have their vote chosen as the winner (and just because I love that book). By the way the winner of that poll, My Bride is the Demon Lord!?, is currently our best selling book of the year.

Lo and behold, PANDRA was the best selling hentai manga on Amazon the week it came out.


I mean, we're even the first (and only) company to officially publish ero-guro in English. That book contains cannibalism and snuff! Not to mention our books are banned in several countries around the world due to their aforementioned controversial (non-vanilla) content.

I don't buy your complaints, and I don't think you are making them with a good conscience.

And you know i love you for it. I do hope for more cross dressing, trans and straight/yaoi trap manga. I also hope Dropout will come. It's not like i won't buy it if they're diabeetus leg rotting sweet vanilla either.

You are going to be extremely happy with our next big announcement, Uncle Freaky.

I never really cared about genres and tags before, so I won’t start now.

I look for good stories, professional translations, and premium quality (physical books), add DRM free ebooks to that and I will be a customer for a long long time.

FAKKU checks off all those requirements, I genuinely look forward to any license that they acquire cause at the end of the day I just wanna read something that I can call “good”, and I can’t judge anything if I don’t read it.

Add art I enjoy, and this pretty much sums up my feelings about what I look for in English ero manga releases.

Also, I'm forever grateful to FAKKU for releasing Shoujo Material in English.

Anyway, a suggestion for those wanting non-vanilla books, instead of saying "I want more non-vanilla," suggest actual, specific titles you're looking for if you haven't already. There's a thread for that.

I'm super Vanilla(or anything that's very close to it) but I can make exception as long if it's not hardcore rape, forced, drugs, etc etc (if you like those, more power to you, everyone has their likes and dislikes!). Heck I'm even starting to like cheating stories like "The Young Housewife's Circumstances".

Now I could also very well start complaining about certain tags being not getting enough attention (I really like incest/inseki titles and recently getting into loli) but I prefer not to come across as giant obsessed twat.(not a complaint not a complaint)

I will also take this oppurtunity to thank everyone at Fakku for all their wonderful work! Especially for the book "Special Days" by Shibasaki Shouji. Not only is it my favorite book it also helped me trough a very rough period of my life... Really thank you so very much!

I think its a fair shout.

I mean, Vanilla aint my thing but i understand why it'd be at the forefront given it's mass appeal. And derailment of threads is a legit enough reason to cull, so whatever.

I look at my preorders and I always seem to have 3-4 books up for order at any one time so Fakku must be doing okay by me. Sure, i'd personally like more NTR or whatever, but ultimately I'm just thankful for all the Fakku staffs work in general. To see how far they come from where they started is pretty amazing and some great books have come out of it which we'd never have gotten otherwise.

This is actually not up for debate, as it's very simple to look up: 539 pages of hentai vs 199 pages of vanilla = 37% of vanilla on the site.


In that case, we have a lot more than 2-3 releases per year that falls into that category.


I didn't personally work on that title, but that's great to hear. I'll bring it up to the team in our meeting today. Glad we could help!

The all time best selling list doesn't give you enough insight into sales. Especially if you're trying to evaluate the viability of a business. Is Futabu Mix selling more or less than Pandemonium launch aligned? Including third party stores and conventions sales, is Drawn by Brush still behind Futabu? Most importantly, how many books in the fakku store ranking are profitable? There's no way you can extract useful data from that list without some numbers and context.

I have no issues with your output. As everyone, I also want all my favorite hentai artists to be on fakku and get paid more. But I understand that everyone isn't like me so I'll take it as it comes.

The same argument can be used for any tag. Tags naturally have a limited scope, so when you take the inverse of that, you cast a very wide net. There's a huge difference between "vanilla" applying to 40% of the content vs 90%, with the former being a lot more sensible. "Non-vanilla" is pretty useless in either case.

That's precisely why complaining about vanilla is such a poor form of feedback. Asking for non-vanilla is just as vague as asking for non-femdom, regardless of how you define it. Instead of repeatedly saying what you don't want, it's a lot more helpful to say what you actually want.


Tags are shown on each chapter. If you're unsure about a title, wait two weeks until the chapters are out before pre-ordering.


This is pretty much spot on. Launch figures, Amazon sales, popularity at conventions, etc. is exactly the kind of data we go over during book meetings.

Agreed. I wasn't at all happy with the way the first poll was handled, and we tried to rectify that with the Yamatogawa poll.


You'd be happy to hear that's not the case. We actually have two separate categories when picking books: hardcore and alternative. The 2-3 book quota is only for hardcore titles, and everything you describe falls into the alternative category. There's no set limit for alternative titles, but we usually end up with a similar number as the hardcore ones. In other words, The Otaku in 10,000 B.C. - Volume 1 "stole" a slot from a vanilla title, and not a hardcore book.


All I can say is we base our decisions on data that's a lot more in-depth than what's at the top of the store, so you don't have to worry about our bottom line. If you honestly believe we're passing on profitable titles just to protect our public image, I'm afraid there's not much I can say or do to convince you otherwise.